Of course, testing is an enormous and complex topic that we have covered in many posts in the past. But as we approach the end of another school year
and children all over the nation sit down for the latest round, we thought we’d bring together recent related Times and Learning Network pieces, and suggest a few ways to use them with your students.

Meanwhile, we’d love to hear from you. What standardized tests do your students take? What do you tell your students about these tests? How, if at all, do you prepare for them? What kind of impact does standardized
testing have on teaching and learning in your classroom, school and district in general? Tell us in the comments section, below.

Personal Response

We have asked a number of Student Opinion questions about standardized testing in the last year or two, all of which are still open for comment. Before tackling one of the more involved activities below, students might
warm up by reading and commenting on any of the following posts:

Why are students in the United States taking more and more standardized tests? What effect does that have on teachers, students, schools and curriculums? What can these kinds of tests tell us — and what can’t they tell us? How do schools and policy makers use the data? How good are these tests currently? How could they be better?

These are just some of the many questions that stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, principals, policy makers and politicians, have been grappling with since the federal No Child Left Behind education law was overhauled to focus on standardized testing.

Invite your students to do their own inquiry into the topic, whether concentrating on local tests, or looking into the role of testing nationally or internationally. Invite them to raise and investigate their own questions
about the topic and its relevance to their lives.

One way to start them brainstorming might be to have them use the “One-Question Interview” technique,
in which they pose related questions and interview each other. We suggested this technique, and 11 standardized-testing-related questions you might begin with, in this lesson plan.

When students have researched the questions that interest them, invite them to use their findings in some “real world” way: What recommendations might they have for their own teachers and school or for
policy makers in general based on what they discovered? What is the best way to communicate those findings and recommendations?

We’d be very interested to hear about schools that have already done, or are planning, a project like this. Tell us in the comments, below.

Testing the Tests

What makes a test a good assessment of student learning in a particular subject or skill area? How can you tell a “good test” from a “bad test”? Is there any way to create one great standardized
test that will show something meaningful about students across a whole region or nation, or even the world? Have students share their own ideas about the purposes, promises and pitfalls of assessing students’
achievement using standardized tests, then read a Room for Debate conversation to find others’ perspectives.

Next, use this lesson plan to help students assess two sections of a standardized test that they took or will take this year. What kind of
knowledge and skills does this test measure? What doesn’t it measure? How could it be improved? What ideas have educators suggested for
improving these kinds of tests in general? Are there sometimes problems even with “better” tests? For instance, if a test poses an essay question, which many consider to be a more meaningful measure
than multiple-choice questions, how is that writing then graded? (Students might read this week’s “On Education” column by Michael Winerip on “robo-graders” to learn about one method.)

When Literature Is Reduced to Multiple Choice

Three recent Times pieces look at what can happen when the rich experience of making meaning from literature is reduced to questions that can be scored easily on a standardized test:

What lines from these three different pieces seem to echo, or speak to, each other? What about the experience of reading literature is hard — even, perhaps, impossible — to test? Can the appreciation of
literature be measured? Should it be? What might good assessments of one’s understanding of a work of literature look like?

As a class, brainstorm ways to assess broadly for an understanding of complex literary texts — that is, not just whether students comprehend sentences and vocabulary, but how well they engage with complex ideas;
connect emotionally to characters, settings and events; and apply the things they read to their own lives and the world around them. Encourage students to be creative in posing test alternatives. (Our recent post
“Beyond the Book Report” may help.) In groups, have students
pick an idea from the class brainstorming session and create a prototype assessment — then consider implementing one of them in your own class.

Uncovering Cheating

How widespread is cheating on standardized tests? Do you think cheating is a predictable, and inescapable, result of high-stakes testing in almost any setting? Why or why not? Read about instances in which students have cheated on high-stakes tests and moments when teachers have cheated as well. Why do you think they did it?

What do trends in test scores tell us? Is it fair to compare schools, states or even nations using this data? Why or why not?

Have students examine data, like these charts and graphs,
relevant to the scores they are studying to make observations and draw conclusions. These linked here depict trends in SAT scores over time. If they would like to consider the SAT test as one case study, they might
read about declining SAT scores both in the last year and over the last 10 years. Then
follow one of two lesson plans, either “Attitudes on Aptitude: Analyzing the Drop in SAT Reading Scores” or “Testing the Statistics,” to have students use data to make recommendations about college entrance examinations to different
target audiences, like students and parents, teachers and administrators, tutors and test prep organizations, the College Board or the United States Department of Education.

With the release of “value added” scores for New York City teachers in February, discussion on these topics was passionate.
Read some of what you can find linked here to decide how you feel. Investigate how your school or district evaluates teachers and what role standardized testing plays in evaluations, then brainstorm possible adjustments
that might make evaluations more accurate.

Use Times search to look at reporting on standardized testing for the last several decades. What has changed? What has stayed the same? For instance, you might read
this 2006 column, written when No Child Left Behind-mandated tests were first rolled out nationwide, so that every student in third to eighth
grade had to take them. How would recent reporting answer the question the writer poses then: “Will the law’s testing demands raise national education standards or lower them?”

Students might compare and contrast a piece from the past with current reporting; create a timeline or cause and effect chart showing how testing has changed education over the years; or create a “standardized-testing
test” with quotes from reporting from different eras and ask others to guess in what year, decade or context those quotes were written.

For me, I was never good at standardized testing, I always thought it was unfair especially when It counts like the SAT’s for a major part of getting into a college. Not every teacher teaches the same things,
so it is hard to give state wide stardardized testing when everyone isn’t taught the same thing. Yes there are “cirriculums” teachers are suppose to follow but how are we getting track if
that’s what they really are doing. Some teachers get bonuses or other promotive things if their students get high test scores. So some teachers give them the information on the tests just for the purpose
of that. I think we need to figure out another way that standardized testing can be more equal.

when it comes to thinking about stardandised tests I always ask myself what is a stardandised child? Whatever it is, I’m not sure I want a standard child. What I would love to know about children is what
unique quality they have to offer society, what makes them stand out. New Zealand doesn’t have stardandised testing in the primary years. I’m disappointed the the government we recently voted in
is pro-stardandised tests for young children. We haven’t gone there yet and I am going to do my all to ensure we don’t. I like you idea of being a co-coordinator and hope you do educate parents
about what the tests really mean, and highlight for them the true qualities of their children.

I am not a fan of standardized testing either. I like the question that was raised, “What is a standardized child?” It was recently presented to me in a meeting about the latest test data for my school
that the results are a snapshot of how the student was feeling on that day of school. If a student does not know the material, then he or she will not do as well, but if a good student is having a bad day, then
they are not going to do well. To me, a standardized test is like saying that we teach in a standardized school. We are saying that all schools are culturally equal and that we should all roughly have the same
result. This is simply not going to happen. We don’t live in a perfect country or a perfect world. I do understand the reasoning for such a test, but it unfair to assume we are all equal all across the
country. Sure, we are all human and created equal and have equal rights, and equal opportunity but that does not mean we are all raised equally, or have a silver spoon in hand, or are all brought up in an environment
or love, care, and support. I teach in an environment that performs this way. They are scrutinized year after year for the performance (failing or at risk of failing). It is the teachers fault of course.